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This page is intended for those who might be inclined to contribute to this project. Below is a list of things that are unfinished, or that I would personally like to see.
NetHack Interface
(These are the functions in cursmain.c called by the core NetHack code)
- Implement curses_rip for optional fancier color tombstone, as well as one that will display correctly on smaller terminals.
- I am confused as to how mark_synch, wait_synch, and delay_output should work. Help, please?
- Both PDCurses and Ncurses have mouse support, so the poskey function could probably be implemented easily enough.
- raw_print is supposed to be able to work before the windowing system has been initialized, as well as after, so I am unsure if curses functions should be used here. Maybe check to see if initscr() has been called, and use curses functions if so, and call initscr() from there is not? Right now it is just a call to puts() with no support for bold text.
Display
- Consolidate refreshes of the display for smoother output.
- Horizontal scrollbar to show position for displays < 80 columns.
- Calls to getch() should probably be turned into wgetch() for the appropriate window. This causes quirky cursor behavior under PDCurses, however.
- Animation effects do not display properly - this could probably be fixed with a correct implementation of the delay_output function.
- Support option to set foreground and background colors for individual windows
Menus
(cursdial.c)
Menus need to be able to accept a count as input, e.g. to specify how many items to drop.
- Currently the "preselected" flag for an individual menu item is ignored. This should eventually be implemented.
- Menus probably should never overlap with the message window, since the user sometimes needs to be able to see the messages while the menu is active, e.g. when identifying multiple items one at a time.
- Perhaps allow for keyboard navigation of individual items, e.g. using the up and down arrows to move among the selectable items, and selecting individual items with the spacebar. Perhaps the tab key could jump to the first selectable item after the next heading, and shift-tab could jump to the first item of the previous heading.
Message Window
(cursmesg.c)
- Hitting Esc at the more prompt (which is '>>' for the curses interface) should suppress the display of any further messages for that turn like the tty interface does.
Map Window
(curswins.c)
- The map window would probably benefit from a total redesign. Right now, it uses a pad instead of a regular curses window, which causes a number of special cases in the code to account for it, and a separate
window behind it just to draw the border. It feels kludgy and annoying!
Status Window
(cursstat.c)
- If the status window is on the right or left, then we have much more room to work with for each item horizontally. Expand out some of the labels for clarity. We can also list the current dungeon (e.g.
Gnomish Mines) and perhaps show thermometer bars for hit points and magical power.
- Conversely, if we have a narrower dislay, compress some of the labels to save space, and do not display some items that never or rarely change (e.g. name, level and title, and alignment). Perhaps
display changes to these fields in the message window if they do happen to change (e.g. converting to a new alignment).
- Maybe add some configuration options for what colors are used and the like.
Other Dialogs
(cursdial.c)
- curses_yn_function needs to accept a count if a '#' is present in choices string.
- Extended commands should be enterable letter-by-letter via a '#' prompt if user does not have the extmenu command set to TRUE.
- Character selection should allow for a random selection of any or all choices.
Other Platforms
PDCurses also work on DOS and OS/2. PDCurses for SDL and ncurses exist for Mac OS X. Porting the curses interface to these platforms should not be too difficult. The Building page gives more information about this.
Misc
- Update documentation and in-game help to describe the newly-added options: cursesgraphics, term_rows, term_cols, and windowborders.
- Recognize "Alt" key in a platform-independant way to allow its use to select extended commands. Currently this works for PDCurses. For Ncurses, the Alt key works in an xterm or rxvt if the -meta8 flag is
passed, but I'd like to see a general way of detecting it.
- PDCurses has a function named "addrawch" to output the visual representation of a control character to the screen without having the control character affect the display otherwise. I would like to find
a way to accomplish the same thing via Ncurses to e.g. be able to use a font like nh10 with the correct symbol mappings in an xterm or the like.
- Convert nh10.bdf text font into a format that PDCurses-SDL can use.
- Add an optional ASCII-art splash screen, possibly using dungeon-drawing characters and color.